In the early 1960s, business owners worried that the proposed Interstate 15 would divert tourists from Cedar City as they travelled to Zions and Bryce Canyon national parks. Fred C. Adams, a professor at Southern Utah State College, thought a theater festival might encourage passing tourists to exit the new freeway. For its first season in 1962, the Utah Shakespeare Festival used a makeshift outdoor platform as a stage, with the audience seated in folding chairs on the lawn. In 1977, the festival built the Adams Shakespearean Theatre, a replica of the original Globe Theatre.

Goff’s Opera House occupied the second floor of the Goff Mercantile and was reached by an enclosed, external staircase. The mercantile opened in 1891, replacing a store built in 1872 by Hyrum’s father, Isaac, and his mother-in-law, Clarissa Arnold. The first floor was converted into a mortuary in 1915 and the building was extensively remodeled in 1954. A new mortuary was built in 1954 at 8090 South State Street.[1]

An evening of entertainment at Goff's Dramatic Hall in 1899, presented by the Lafayette Memorial committee, was attended by an audience of about 400.[5]

Polk’s Utah Gazetteer listed Goff’s Dramatic Hall as being in West Jordan in 1903, with Hyrum Goff as manager.[2] By 1918, West Jordan had come to known by its present name of Midvale and the theater was known as Goff’s Opera House.[3]

The theater was 34 feet wide, according to the 1911 Sanborn fire insurance map, with a stage, scenery, and a 16-foot high ceiling.[4]